


Hundred Years, Hundred More

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:57:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate universe: what if Tarvek had never met Tinka?  Things go very differently at Sturmhalten, and Vrin has to modify her plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not previously posted; title is from the Iron & Wine song 'Woman King', which I listened to incessantly while writing this. I expect this will continue slowly as I desperately try not to get jossed.

\---

#### Prologue: Three years ago

There are still patches of snow on the streets of Balan's Gap, in June, but the drizzling rain is trying to wash them away. It drips down the glass windows of the Princess's private lab, not even having the decency to pound dramatically. 

Inside the heating system is working too hard and turning the air dry and stuffy. A footman has brought coffee and papers to sign, and Tarvek has drunk the coffee and signed the plans for a warehouse near the airship docks, commuted the sentence of an unlucky and incompetent tea smuggler, and permitted a travelling show to set up in Calliope Square for six nights, none of which he strictly has the authority to do but none of which his father has the inclination. Tarvek has been handed control of the city - or rather, grabbed it from his father's faltering hands before it could break. He can only resent the necessity. His father's grief is extravagant, absurd, and entirely his own fault.

No, cancel that: surely the long-absent Lady takes part of the fault, for enticing him to such a desperate experiment. And Tarvek, for being so slow with his own plans. For not even being present, for spending a year in _Paris_ and doing nothing more useful than identifying potential allies. 

Tarvek goes to the window, as soon as the footman has gone, and checks the clouds. There will be lightning tonight. The town below looks yellowish from the sunset, grooved with shadows; the docks have already turned on their arc lamps against the fog. He is doing nothing useful here. He has tried every idea a too-long train ride and three weeks of frantic work could generate, and what remains of his sister is resting safely on her cot, a machine gently easing air into her lungs and out again with a steady whirr, every six seconds. He should go out. It might knock his thoughts into a new shape. 

He should go out, and have some sudden inspiration, see a better option than the one his thoughts have been drifting toward with the inevitability of a weary river winding to the sea. He will not; Tarvek is too old to believe in fairy-tales.

At a minimum, he should sleep. Exhaustion breeds error, and he cannot afford error. 

He rings to call another footman, instead, and asks for someone to draw a bath - which shouldn't be necessary, they have water pipes and a boiler and a bath should be a matter of turning a tap, but the recirculator broke sometime in the last month and the attentions of four plumbers have not sufficed to fix it. The world's sense of irony is intact. While he waits Tarvek goes to check Anevka's body. The voice apparatus hangs silently; she has not spoken for fifty-four hours. Her body looks limp and frail, muscles degraded from disuse. The steady breaths continue. As gently as he can, he pulls up one eyelid. Her pupil fails to contract at all. Really, he should have known better than to hope. 

He'll do it in the morning, Tarvek decides. But first, he will have his bath, and sleep, and write a few letters. It is far too late for haste to matter. 

\--

#### Chapter 1

They usually spend a week in Balan's Gap, Lars explains; the city is big enough to make it worthwhile to repeat shows, and they ready a rotation of four. For the past few years, they have begun with one night at the Royal Theatre: the prince has a taste for Heterodyne shows, with an especial fondness for Socket Wrench of Prauge. "I don't think I've heard of that one," Agatha admits.

"That's not surprising. A lot of towns won't let us put it on." He grins at her. "I'll get you the script and you can ask Zeetha if there's anything you don't understand, alright?"

By the time the circus makes its way over the bridge and onto the paved stone roads of Balan's Gap - the principality, not the city proper - Agatha can recite her lines without blushing. At least, without blushing more than the script allows. 

It was raining the night before, but they climb the pass under a bright blue sky. Payne pays the toll with the traditional grumbling and haggling, and proceeds, to the amusement of the sergeant at the gate, to rip up the pass and make the pieces vanish in a shower of sparks. 

\--

Agatha is already in costume, a black lacy thing that shows more leg than she could have imagined being comfortable with in the distant memory of last March, by the time Zeetha and Tinka take the stage. "And now," Master Payne is booming, "a demonstration of swordsmanship. The amazing Zeetha, a warrior of the Sacred Guard of the Lost City of Skifander, will reveal to you the techniques handed down from her foremothers! And her opponent is none other than - " his voice drops dramatically - "Otilia, Muse of Protection, the fabulous clank made by the great and mysterious Van Rijn!"

It's nonsense, of course, but it gets the audience to gasp and a few to applaud in advance. 

Zeetha wears a vest covered in bronze sequins, and Tinka wears an impressive set of fake wings and wields two cutlasses, decorated with trailing ribbons. They begin by raising their blades in a salute. Payne drops his hand, offstage André begins the drum roll, and the four swords clang together in a very dramatic cross. 

A week ago Zeetha had taught Agatha the choreography - it was almost nothing like a real fight, she'd been careful to point out, but good for strength training anyway. She finds herself counting under her breath, one-two-three- _thrust_ -five-six- _leap_ -eight, in time with their steps. Embi, halfway out of the cat costume, has stopped undressing and taps his foot. Agatha steals a glance through the gap beside the curtains; in the royal box the prince -Aaronev? She was almost certain they'd said Aaronev - smiles at the stage, looking quite entranced. At least he's let the gun drop. One-two- _swing_ -four- _duck_ -six- _cross_ -eight. Agatha was amazed, when she found out the troop had two genuine Van Rijns. She likes the 'Otilia' ruse; it will confuse anyone who hears rumours. 

Lars's hand falls on her shoulder. "Ready for your big entrance?" he murmurs.

"I hope so." _Kneel, you miserable minion!_ She turns just enough to smile at him. "Are the arc lamps very distracting, pointing at the stage like that?"

"Not as much as you'd think. It's very modern, you know - I hear in Vienna they have a clank to change the filters, so they can do all kinds of effects and set them up on advance, and all the stagehands have to do is keep pressing a button." He holds up his empty hands. "And that's all I know, so don't get that Sparky gleam in - actually, please do, it looks great on you."

It counts as getting in character. Agatha takes a few careful breaths, focusing her mind on the _possibilities_ for _theatre_ , all the amazing _visual effects_ , the _things they could do_ with careful use of _transparent_ \- 

The drum is hitting its crescendo. Onstage Zeetha backflips over Tinka's head, between the wings, and shakes the stage with her landing, and the entire audience gasps. They spin to face each other, in perfect unison, and bring up all four blades again. Andre gets the cymbal right, timed exactly with the clash.

They step back, salute each other, and take synchronised bows. The applause, as usual, is loud. 

\--

"Your performance was brilliant," Prince Tarvek is telling her, "I've never seen so charming an actress." He says it in such a beautiful, deep voice, hand gently on her elbow, that she scarcely notices the turns. "Have you been with the circus long?"

"Only a few months." Agatha frowns; there is something wrong here. "I never expected to go on the stage, but, well, it's been wonderful."

"Than I am glad your talents had a chance to flourish."

She knows what's wrong now. There are two things wrong. They are in a narrow hallway, wood-panelled and dim and _deserted,_ and - "I didn't see you in the Royal Box." 

Tarvek, to her amazement, grins. "I wasn't there, I'm afraid. But my father told me what an _amazing_ voice you have. Come on, we don't have much time."

Agatha steps back, all Abner's warnings echoing in her mind. "Your Highness, where exactly do you intend to take me?"

"To my rooms, first." 

He grabs her elbow again, and she tenses, wondering whether to make a preemptive strike. "I doubt your father would approve of your manhandling a guest -"

Tarvek stops dead. Turns to face her. with an expression of amusement. "My father is dead," he says quietly. "We are leaving before the body is discovered. There's a secret passage that starts in my rooms. Surely you didn't think this was just going to be a pleasant family supper, Madame Olga? Come _on_."

"What? You expect me to believe -"

"Oh, for - here." He fishes in his pocket. Agatha gasps. It's a tiny raygun, and he's offering it to her, grip first. "Tuck this somewhere, don't let anyone see it."

A little dazed, she slips it under the ruffles in her sash. Her feet are trailing after Tarvek almost without her conscious intervention, amazement and anger warring in her brain.

( _He gave her a death ray!_ )

They brush through more hallways, pass a few servants who don't seem aware of their presence, and then they are in a comfortable-looking sitting room, with chairs in pink silk and an imposing desk. There's a fireplace, but it's dark and empty; despite this the room is comfortably warm. Tarvek punches three random bits of brass decoration on the desk, and grabs the bulging satchel from the panel that pops open. "Block the door," he tells her, "no reason to make things easy," and Agatha thinks for half a second and decides to go the traditional route and drag the desk in front of it. Two months ago she wouldn't have had the strength; even now it's a challenge. After a few seconds Tarvek gets on the other side and shoves, and they manage surprisingly easily. He twists a few wall sconces sideways for no reason she can discern, then grimaces and nods.

There's a hole next to the fireplace that wasn't there before. "Careful, it's steep," he says, and takes her elbow again.

It's also dark. Agatha keeps her free hand on the wall. 

"Can we talk safely now?" she asks, a few flights later.

"Yes, but quietly. Some of these passages run very near ones the Geisterdamen use."

"Geister - " Agatha grits her teeth, and very carefully does not shout, or shove Tarvek down the stairs.  
" _What is going on?_ " 

"You have a - very commanding voice, Madame Olga." Tarvek sounded too serious for something that could have been a flirtation. "I mean that literally."

\--

The story he tells is - sickeningly plausible. It unrolls like one of those children's rhymes where every line is longer.

The Geisterdamen serve their Goddess. The Geisterdamen serve their Goddess, so they search for her lost Holy Child, so they came to Balan's Gap where Prince Aaronev would help them, because he served the same Goddess. They search for her lost Holy Child, so they look for women whose voice is like their Goddess, so when Aaronev's instruments picked up her voice, he thought she was the lost Holy Child, so he took her back to Sturmhalten so the Geisterdamen could summon their Goddess into her brain. 

Agatha has to bite her tongue at that point to keep from screaming, and Tarvek wraps an arm around her waist. "Quiet," he breathes into her ear, "this is the dangerous part."

She can hear noises through the wall. Metallic clangs, people talking in a language she does not know, although with the muffled distortion it tugs at the edges of her understanding. 

The passage curves, the voices fade, and Tarvek exhales in relief. "I don't think they know we're missing yet."

" _Keep talking._ "

"Right." He sighs. "Well - my father was undoubtedly a fanatic, but he was meticulous. If he thought the Geisterdamen could get their Goddesses back using your body - they could. So I killed him and left the body in his acid tank. It would make a fantastically unlikely accident, I'm afraid, and the Baron will almost certainly send a questor, but it does completely destroy the brain."

She'll be horrified by how casual he sounds - later. When she's done being furious. At what she's not entirely sure. "And why do you care what happens to me?"

"Ah, a cynic!" He chuckles. "Because, Madame Olga, you may not be their lost Holy Child - but your voice is so commanding, I expect the Geisterdamen would obey you anyway. A most useful skill, if we are to keep them from unleashing the shkmah."

"The what?"

"It's a - mind-control technique. Some kind of infection, they would never tell me the details. They want to conquer Europa for their goddess."

She can get angry, now, without the horrible headaches starting up. She is very grateful for that right now. 

They take an abrupt left turn, go up a flight of steps, and then the noise of running water and a smell that makes her nose wrinkle and suggests that on the other side of that iron grate is a sewer tunnel. Agatha tightens her hand on her raygun.

\--

One thing a warrior of Skifander learns is to trust her intuition. No one can reason about everything they see, but in battle reason has little place; if she lets her intuition do the work and present its conclusions, there may be time to act on them. Zeetha learned that quickly and well. 

She has been sitting in the prop wagon for most of an hour, with her intuition screaming. There is no action she can take that would be of use.

Moxana offers her a card again: a horsewoman bearing a longbow, pointed at a tiny shape almost invisible in the background of trees. _The Hunter._ Zeetha sighs, and holds it up to Tinka. "I don't suppose you can interpret this any better?'

"I do not tell fortunes," Tinka informs her in the same sweet tone she always uses.

Zeetha contemplates the merits of putting out the lamp and going to bed. She certainly doesn't need sleep, she slept plenty last night, but still less does she need this - dithering. Pointless agitation. She needs someone to talk to. Tinka doesn't do well with _conversation_ at the best of times, Embi would try to be reassuring at her and just leave her wanting to strangle something, and Yeti will already be asleep. So will most of the troupe, except - hah. Lars is almost certainly fretting harder than Zeetha.

It turns out he's not only fretting, he's sitting up with Master Payne and Countess Marie drinking what Zeetha sincerely hopes is one of the Countess's soothing tonics. When Zeetha drops to the bench beside him he twitches and yelps.

Zeetha lays a friendly hand on his shoulder. "So," she offers, "you think this stinks like a ffarnlk too?"

"I. Er. I don't um. Don't know what a ffarnlk is?" 

"Be glad, they're no fun at all." She nods to Payne and Marie. "How long are these formal dinners supposed to last?"

Marie raises her eyebrows and looks thoughtful. "If they do nine courses? Or drinks and dancing afterwards? Two or three hours. It would be silly to start worrying before midnight."

There's a long silence.

Zeetha crosses her arms. "Not that that's stopping anyone, eh?"

"He never asked Pix to dinner!" Lars's knuckles are going white on his cup. "Who knows what he wants with her! You know what they say about actresses!"

She squeezes his shoulder. "My zumil can take care of herself. Probably better than you."

"Right, right, any minute now she's going to knock on the door and we'll all feel very stupid for -"

There's a knock on the door.

Zeetha shifts to make sure her swords are in easy reach. Master Payne, frowning, gets up and thumps over to the door. 

Outside are a young red-haired man in fashionable clothes, wearing a Sturmvoraus sigil, and - Agatha. Her zumil. Zeetha can feel the tension leave her in a rush. She doesn't look ill-used, although there are smudges of dirt on the skirts of her hideous seafoam dress, and how did that happen at a dinner party? She mostly looks annoyed. The young man looks as if he would like to hit someone. "Are you Master Payne?"

"I am. And you, sir?" Payne glowers. He's left room for Agatha to dart inside, but she doesn't seem inclined.

"Prince Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus. I'm sorry to tell you this, but your circus will need to leave town immediately."

Payne's glower intensifies slightly. "We have a permit for eight days of performances."

"Really? May I see?"

Her intuition is screaming at her, and although politics was never Zeetha's strong subject, she can't help but wonder: why has the prince come himself to deliver back a guest? Why not send her in a carriage? The dirt on her dress is - odd. They must have taken an alleyway. And why would the prince ask questions about their permits? But Agatha isn't afraid of him, and nor is she angry, and so Zeetha waits for a cue. 

Payne finally produces the piece of paper, marked with a neat sword-and-gear in purple ink, from his writing box. Tarvek takes it. He pulls a little sparker like the one Agatha made for Lars from his pocket, flicks the flame to life, and holds it up close to the paper as he reads. Then, without changing his expression, he lights the permit on fire. 

Everyone stares. 

"There," Tarvek says, still perfectly calm, and drops the remnant of paper just before the flame can reach his fingers. "You have no incentive or permission to stay. Get out right now, and run like there are monsters after you. I assure you there will be." 

\--


	2. Chapter 2

#### Chapter 2

There is only so much hurrying it is possible to do with twenty-six circus wagons in the dark. 

At Tarvek's insistence, Agatha sat beside Master Payne, wrapped in a concealing cloak and scarf, and told the gate guards not to worry about them and not to tell anyone where they had gone. They would obey, he said, because she sounded like one of the Ghost Ladies. Agatha decided to get some answers out of him later, when they weren't in such a hurry. The strange thing was that there had still been no sign of pursuit. 

They are three kilometers down the road when a tiny airship, glowing blueish through the envelope - it must have one of those new bimodal carbane engines - rises into view from the city. It's moving fast, heading directly for a low, dark cloud formation. Tarvek relaxes when Agatha pulls aside the velvet window-curtains of Payne's wagon to point it out, shoulders slumping. "The messenger to the Baron. Good."

Zeetha, who has taken a seat in front of the door as if to block his escape, rolls her eyes. "He'll send a questor."

"Everyone is scared enough to be going by the book. They'll have the city sealed off. Less chance of pursuit."

"Sealed off?"

"It's traditional, when the Prince dies."

They fall back into brooding silence, after that.

\--

This side of Balan's Gap is shallow - luckily, or else they couldn't risk it in the dark. As it is they're travelling at barely a walking pace. Still, they're moving. 

Despite everything, Agatha finds herself slipping into a doze. The adrenaline of their - escape? Does it count as an escape? - is long gone, and the excitement has left her drained.

She is knocked back to awareness by a bump in the road, and hears a low murmur of voices. " - shouldn't just leave you at the border post, Your Highness," Zeetha is saying. 

"Well, the terribly practical reason is that I can write you a pass to cancel the toll. A token of recompense for the lost performances."

"That's nothing, we'll just do some extra shows in Mechanicsburg." She does sound slightly mollified. "I don't trust you."

"We can still work together. How exactly do you expect me to betray you? You're being _suspiciously_ paranoid, you know."

That silences Zeetha for a few seconds. Then: "You expect me to think protecting Agatha is your only reason for running away?"

"Agatha? She was introduced to me as Olga."

"It's a stage name. And don't change the subject."

"How's this for a subject change: why are there three JÃ¤germonsters on the roof of the wagon?" He was flat. Now there's a cold fury in his voice, and it twinges with spark. Agatha decides to keep her eyes closed, but she lets her hand fall to the death ray still tucked under her sash. 

"What are you talk-"

"I saw them while you were loading up. Don't play the fool with me, Miss Zeetha. I do want to help your Agatha. We're on the same side, so let's not lie to each other."

That hangs in the air so long Agatha almost gives up and pretends to wake up. The wagon bumps, lurches to the left as they make another turn, and Zeetha says, sounding as if the words are being dragged out of her, "They're not the Baron's, if that's what you're worrying about."

"Didn't think so." 

"And yet that does worry you."

"I did just murder the Prince of Sturmhalten. The Baron won't be happy about that."

"And you admit it."

"He deserved it." Tarvek heaves a sigh. "But, yes, the idea that he might _succeed_ at bringing back the Ghost Ladies' goddess made his death somewhat more urgent. I don't think she would be at _all_ the right person to rule Europa."

"The Baron's not doing a bad job, as far as I can tell. Keeps things peaceful. He wouldn't be happy some Goddess showed up and tried to take over." Zeetha sounds a little more relaxed, falling into her teacher-voice. Like she trusts he has a point, and just wants to hear him argue it. Agatha breathes carefully. 

"Were you _listening_ when I mentioned the _shkmah_?" And now Tarvek's voice is crackling with Spark again. "He wouldn't have to be happy to do _everything they say_. Which is _why_ I want Miss Agatha _safe_ , so she can _cancel them out!_ I will not yield the _Lightning Throne_ to some _third-rate diva -_ " There's another bump. 

This would, Agatha thinks, be a good moment to wake up. She jerks upright, gasps, and rubs her eyes. Tarvek looks at her, eyes narrowing. "But perhaps we should discuss all that later?" His voice is back to smooth and calm. 

Agatha conspicuously blinks the sleep from her eyes. "Discuss what?"

"Your natural talents, madam. I may have a proposition for you." He smiles.

"Can it wait a little? I should go change." She ruefully pats the rumpled, mud-stained seafoam skirt.

Tarvek has taken his glasses off, and squints at them in annoyance. "It can wait until morning. I think we could both use the rest."

She exchanges the brief-farewell signs with Zeetha, and hops down to the ground - another thing she would have balked at, a few months back, but now leaping from a moving wagon is a simple matter of balance. She walks past the line of wagons to Baba Yaga, and calls to Rivet, on the driver's bench, to stop and lower the legs so she can get aboard. She climbs in, waits until the floor lifts, and peels off the seafoam dress. 

Then she wakes up Krosp, in case he can make more sense of the situation.

\--

Dawn breaks late over the mountains, glowing red, then yellow through the trees. Agatha takes a minute to admire it while she refills Baba Yaga's boiler. 

Back in the driver's seat, Krosp lashes his tail from side to side. "Are we going to stop for breakfast?"

"I don't know." She sags. "Didn't you get that bag of candied fish back in Balan's Gap?"

"Ate'em already."

"Well, we'll have to stop sometime." 

Krosp hrrmphs. "If the Geisterdamen want to attack us they should do it soon. We're almost out of trees." And almost to the border of Sturmhalten land, but that, Agatha suspects, will not be a concern for them.

\--

Lars has spent all night driving, and feels it, and is painfully aware he probably looks it.

Half an hour past dawn, Payne trumpets a halt and the wagons circle. They're out of the trees now; a broad plain, half-carpeted in crops, stretches down towards the Plictisitor River. There are a handful of villages down the road, and Lars can make out the huddled shapes of houses and the slow-rising smoke from their chimneys.

This is not the first time he's been down this road. It should feel familiar and safe. He's on the verge of a panic attack. 

Master Payne waits until everyone has piled out of the wagons to address them. He keeps it simple: their performance writ from Sturmhalten was revoked, they are expecting pursuit, they are going to keep until dark and stop only long enough to rest the horses, they leave again in twenty minutes. Breakfast will be cold. 

He should go back to Abner's wagon. He should go to Payne and offer to ride ahead, that's his job and the wagons can't go as fast as a horse and rider even in daylight on good roads, except that right now it would probably be a good way to get stabbed by Geisterdamen. Instead he goes to Baba Yaga. He is only a little surprised that Prince Sturmvoraus got there first.

The Prince has found a dingy cream-colored coat that's a little too big, and the long black wig that the Adventuress From Mars wears in _The Diamond Serpent of Bombay_. It - well. It makes him a lot less recognizable, Lars will grant that. He swallows. "Your Highness?" 

"Hello. Lars, wasn't it? This is Agatha's wagon?"

"Yes, but you would probably be more comfortable in Master Payne's -"

"I need to talk to her."

Lars narrows his eyes. The prince looks supercilious. Neither of them speaks. It's like something out of one of those hideous modernist plays from Dublin.

When Agatha returns she is carrying half a loaf of rye bread, a string of sausage, and a piece of weisslacker cheese the size of her fist. She looks back and forth between them, and Lars grits his teeth and asks. "Agatha! Do you mind if we ride with you? Because His Highness said he wanted to talk to you and - " He can't bring himself to say _and I don't want him alone with you_ to the Prince's face.

Agatha hands him the sausages. "I don't mind. Look, you look tired. Why don't you take a nap while we go? You can take my bed."

He swallows. "Are you sure -"

"It's fine. He can sit up front with me."

\--

Krosp is being subtle, or is busy comparing notes with Lars, she doesn't know which. Tarvek is sitting next to her on the driver's seat of Baba Yaga, so close she can almost feel his body heat. In other circumstances she'd enjoy it.

They're most of a kilometer down the road before he breaks the silence. "You handle this well."

"What?"

"The wagon. Double-clutch Belgian overgear, isn't it?"

"You work with a lot of clank wagons?" She's surprised to find herself smiling.

"No, but I've listened to a lot of mechanics complain about them." He smiles back, warm and charming. "I'm better with more delicate work. Electrical circuits, biomedical - you know almost no work has been done on clank-animal interfaces? Prosthetic limbs for humans, that's well-trodden ground, but the possibilities of using _biological controls_ for more _advanced_ clankwork are neglected. Pyadlov, in Krakow, he's tried using _direct connections_ to the _spine_ to create birds that follow _predetermined flight paths_ , but that's such a _rigid_ approach, the poor things kept running into carts - " He breaks off. "Ah, I'm sorry. Am I boring you?"

"Oh, not at all." Pyadlov - that name sounds familiar. Who - "Dmitri Pyadlov, right? I think he was corresponding with Doctor Nells at Transylvania Polygnostic. Something about self-modifying circuitry."

"Yes! Exactly! Of _course_ at a size small enough to fly with there's so _little_ you can _modify_. Have you been to Beetleburg?"

"Oh, I grew up there. I used to work at the University." It's close to truth, nothing dangerous to admit, and nothing interesting. "You know, Nells really has done some _fascinating_ things with miniaturized clank controls. Last I heard he was trying to sell copies of his automatic cat for research money. But that was gearwork, and of course there's always a _trade_ between size and _delicacy_ with gears. Now, if someone could miniaturize _thermionic valves_ with the same _efficiency_ -"

"The controls would be _more durable_ and _less coordinate-;dependent!_ Exactly! Are you familiar with the work of Ambrose Fleming?

"Ah, no, Your Highness. Is he English?" 

"And should be better known on the continent. And call me Tarvek, I think we'd better not stand on ceremony. Under the circumstances." He looks rueful, and waves a hand vaguely at the wagon train.

Ah, yes. _The circumstances._ Agatha takes a deep breath. "Yes. Last night you said you had an - offer for me."

"I did. How would you like to be Queen of Europa?"

She almost drives Baba Yaga into the ditch.

The sudden swerve throws them both to the side. Tarvek grabs at her shoulders, hissing. Agatha manages to shove the leg lever back to center and yanks both clutches open, then gently presses them back in. She's gotten plenty of practice at this now, but it's a good thing they're at the end of the line. Really she should have replaced the clutches, there's no gearing and riding them for speed is going to strip the teeth eventually, but her little clanks have been reducing the stresses. It will last to Mechanicsburg. 

"That's quite the offer," she says, when her breath is back. Heart still pounding, though. He hasn't let go of her. "What makes you think you can make it?"

"Well, I'm going to be the Storm King." 

"Really."

He holds up a hand to forestall her sceptical look. "I'm a direct descendant of Andronicus Valois. On my mother's side. Of the Fifty Families, about - well, a third would accept the claim. And perhaps half the Knights of Jove."

She turns this over in her head a few times, until she finds the hole. "Well, Tarvek -" he smiles encouragingly at the name - "what do the Geisterdamen think of the claim?"

His smile turns so sharp it glints. "They recognize no authority but their Goddess, of course. We'll simply have to conquer them. That's where you come in. It will make a good story."

"A good story."

"Oh yes. _The Storm King and the Lost Heterodyne Heir._ You are an actress, aren't you? Think of it as the role of a lifetime."

Agatha is too busy being flabbergasted to answer, but at least this time she doesn't swerve the wagon.

\--

He's giving her the story in bits and pieces, she knows that, but Agatha isn't sure pushing would get it out faster. They hurry down the road, clawed feet clicking on the paving stones. As they get further down the valley the farmed plots are closer and thicker. They pass without stopping by a small town Tarvek identifies as Stropiburg - the kind of place they would have set up for one night, if they weren't in such a hurry to get to Mechanicsburg.

Mechanicsburg has walls.

He talks about Baron Wulfenbach, and how fragile his empire is. He talks about how many people still murmur of how good things will be when the Storm King comes back. He talks about the importance of stories. He talks about the _shkmah_ , and how subtle and dangerous it is, and how many people are already infected - how he thinks it's based on the hive engines of the Other, and by the time he gets to that Agatha's blood is running hot enough she doesn't feel any more angry. He talks about the chance to set things right. Starting, he says, from a position of strength. Mechanicsburg would be a position of strength.

But they have to move quickly. They might only have a year to get ready. The wasp's nest has been disturbed, and the Geisterdamen will be on the move.

He says he knows he can trust her. He doesn't say why.

\--

They are about to cross the Plictisitor, and pass out of the territory of Balan's Gap. The sun is beating down from overhead. Payne calls for a pause, to stretch their legs and change drivers.

"Are the border guards going to recognize you?" Agatha asks, giving Tarvek a sceptical look. His shoes are too expensive and flimsy, but between the coat and wig - especially the impressive fringe, it almost hides his eyes - it's not obvious. Except - "How badly do you need those glasses?"

"I can make out trees at fifty paces," he assures her with a charming smile, and makes them vanish. "Go, think about it, I won't ruin your wagon."

Zeetha has taken a perch on top of the prop wagon, her usual spot when she's not walking alongside. Agatha settles next to her, and they watch in silence as Baba Yaga jerks to the left, makes a grinding noise that leaves Agatha wincing in sympathy, and then bounces up and down in place.

"So," Krosp says. "Prince Charming can't drive a double-clutch Belgian overgear?"

"I didn't leave any shock-sensitive explosives in there. It'll be fine. He'll get the hang of it." Almost certainly. Agatha shrugs. Zeetha snickers.

"Yeah, well, let's hope he's a better Spark than he is a driver."

"How much did you hear?"

Krosp turns to address Zeetha, as if he'll get any more sympathy that way. "You know what he wants her to do? He wants her to run a fake Heterodyne Heir scam!"

"Reeeealy." Zeetha leans back on her hands and smirks. "How interesting."

Agatha finds herself wondering where her JÃ¤gers are. She saw them last night, climbing Taki's wagon, but nothing since. "I'm . . . considering it," she announces, and takes a deep breath to keep from breaking into hysterical laughter. "It's not just; that. He wants to re-establish the Lightning Throne."

Either they are listening attentively, or they are too stunned to respond. But after a few seconds, there's no laughter. Agatha chooses to take that as a good sign.

They are slowing down now, as the lead wagons halt before the bridge. If they are lucky, nobody sent a pigeon ahead, nobody told the border guards they existed, much less to stop them. Just in case, Agatha lies down between two thick bags of stage curtains.

They are lucky. 

Ten minutes later, Agatha sits up and considers their surroundings. There's nobody on the wagon roofs, except the three of them. Tinka is driving the prop wagon, wrapped in her usual concealing veil, but she will not hear if they are quiet. 

"Zeetha," she begins. "There's something I have to tell you."

There's a protesting noise from Krosp, and a noise like _aha_ from Zeetha. "Something to do with those three clowns who've been following us since Zumzum?" 

"Yes." She exhales, only a little shaky. "Yes, it's something to do with them." 

\--

Lars is trying to be philosophical about being ousted from his bunk by Pix - or at least, by Pix's presence, he's sure the actual _bunk_ isn't seeing any use - but when he found her on the driver's seat beside Abner, when they stopped at noon, he still felt obliged to get a few digs in before wandering off to find somewhere else to ride. He ended up next to Yeti, holding the reins while Yeti ran his massive fingers over his string of coral beads and quietly chanting something he'd always sworn was a foolproof mantra for compelling animal obedience. His two cows had never struck Lars as particularly well-behaved in harness, but Yeti said they were an improvement on cows in general. 

They make it over the bridge without any stampeding, at least, and when the road starts to show cracks and the fields turn into wildflower meadows they ignore them and keep plodding. The convoy is making good time even on the bad road, going fast enough anyone walking alongside would have to break into a jog now and then to keep up. If they keep it up they'll be in Mulverschtag by dark, and that's a safe place to rest. They'll need it by then; horses aren't built to pull wagons for twenty hours straight, and neither, as far as he can tell, are cows. 

"Tell me something encouraging," he tells Yeti. 

Yeti grins back; this is an old game. "It could be raining." 

"It could be raining _fish_."

"They'd pile up. The wagons would run off the road." 

"Right here they'd probably run into the river and sink." 

"We'd be swept away. All the way to the Danube." 

"All the way to the Black Sea." 

"Get our toes nibbled off by vicious carnivorous squid." Yeti frowns. "Or did they eradicate those?" 

"No - they tried to introduce acid-spitting turtles to prey on them, though." Lars perks up. He's not quite so creative as Yeti, but sometimes he can come up with an inventive contribution. 

A quarter-hour later, they've managed to make themselves indirectly responsible for the destruction of Constantinople by fire-breathing slime creatures with tentacles, and Lars's mood is much improved. They move on to debating which shows to do in Mechanicsburg - ultimately up to Master Payne, of course, but the debate is fun. Mechanicsburg always gives him palpitations, there's nothing like a big statue of the man you're pretending to be to make you wonder if the whole thing is as idiotic as it sometimes feels and you wouldn't have been better off staying a cheesemaker. But the people there like a good show as much as anyone, and applaud especially hard at the scenes that involve Klaus making a fool of himself, in Lars's estimation. Maybe they can break out _West Pole_ again this year; Agatha really breathes new life into Lucrezia. 

And that thought, given what happened in Sturmhalten - what didn't happen, what they are fleeing from now - is enough to turn his mood black and trembling again. To distract himself, he puts forth the completely ridiculous suggestion that they'll do _Hall of Mirrors_ , and insists on walking - well, jogging - up to his own wagon to get the script, and then taking the reins while Yeti helps him run lines.

He's very rusty. It takes most of the afternoon. But eventually he manages to remember the whole 'heart forged by hidden fires' soliloquy in one go, and by then the sun is starting to drop. Despite everything they're about to be somewhere they can rest for a little while. The road has turned away from the river proper, and is just about to go through the little patch of forest, two kilometers wide, that stands just outside Mulverschtag. There are flowers blooming. There's a gentle breeze blowing, and it's a beautiful day. 

Of course, then the Geisterdamen attack. 

\--


	3. Chapter 3

#### Chapter 3

That Agatha is a Heterodyne was not surprising. Zeetha had begun to suspect already, from the strength of her spark and the insistent loyalty of the Jägermonsters. That she wants to take her rightful place in the home of her ancestors is only natural. Her zumil will make a fine War Queen.

She'll have to learn fast. If what the prince said is true - and she has no taste for politics, but Zeetha can generally smell lies - they're about to have a war. When she spots the pale spidery legs emerging from the trees Zeetha isn't surprised at all.

She rises to sound the alarm; from the roof of Master Payne's wagon, Thundering Engine Woman is doing the same. Agatha starts up, and Zeetha presses a hand to her shoulder. "Stay here. They want you; don't make it easy for them."

She doesn't wait for a response before she leaps down and draws her swords.

The alarm horn is sounding; the fighters are climbing out of their wagons. No time or place to circle them, no hope of turning around; they'll just have to win. Zeetha's heart is pounding like it hasn't since the Hhavrandion Kingdom tried to invade and her mother sent her out with the raiding parties.

She didn't see where they came from, but the Jägers are suddenly _there_ , standing beside her, weapons at the ready. 

The first spiders emerge from the trees in a wedge formation. It would be a decent battle plan, if the circus didn't have so many people with ranged weapons. Augie takes the first shot. He was probably aiming for the lead spider, but he misses it and catches the next in the leg. It still works; the spider chitters and rears up in pain and then falls down as the deep hum of Yeti's gravity engine fills the air. The two behind it trip over the fallen body. 

Tinka raises her swords. "Clumsy," she says, with something like wonder in her voice.

" _Careless,_ " Zeetha answers. "Come on." And they leap forward to meet the onslaught.

The fight blurs together after that. There are, Zeetha guesses, four dozen attackers on spiders, or were - some on foot, but they may have dismounted to attack when they saw what good _targets_ their spiders made. When she slices them open they bleed green goo. 

They know she's dangerous, and three come at her from all sides, but the one to her left falls down with a tiny burst of purple light - her zumil must be using the prince's death ray, nothing Agatha built would be so quiet. By the time she's thought that she's whirled around to deal with the others.

Tinka has vanished, Dame Aedith is exclaiming loudly in Latin as she reloads and Augie has pulled out the duelling hammers again. The purple Jäger slashes very neatly through two spider-legs, grin impossibly wide. Zeetha leaps over a pale body and hopes that green goo isn't as slippery as it looks. The Geisterdamen are yelling in their strange clicking language. If their tone of voice is anything like humans', they're scared. On the defensive. 

_Good._

She keeps moving. It's nice to be able to improvise; all her dances with Tinka are choreographed. She slashes, thrusts, catches one of their massive blades in her quat'ara and breaks it with a twist. The space around her is oddly free of enemies, so Zeetha runs toward the nearest, on the edge of the woods, and is almost there before she hears Payne's horn and pulls up short. "Fall back!" he's bellowing. "We move!" 

The prop wagon is already moving by the time Zeetha jumps aboard. Agatha is driving; the horses are sweating and white-eyed with terror, but they havn't broken their traces. It will be a miracle if none of the wagons are stalled, though. 

"Good shooting," Zeetha tells Agatha once she's caught her breath. "Did we lose anyone? Could you see?" 

"Not well. Don't think so." Agatha is breathing hard too, from what must be sheer adrenaline. "I don't know where Tinka is, did you see her?" 

"No. Must have jumped on another wagon." She glances over; beneath her concealing scarf Agatha's eyes are tight with worry. "We'll count heads in town," she assures her.

There's a commotion somewhere behind them, but, well, it's behind them, and right now the only important direction is _forward_.

\--

They get the last carts inside Mulverschtag by sunset. They claim, more or less plausibly, to have been attacked by bandits. They count heads. Two carts lost - Organza Fifield's, upturned when the horses tried to bolt, and Herr Helios's towed blimp, cut loose in the confusion and last seen vanishing into the clouds. Eight people with sword wounds, none mortal, although Wanda will get a chance to try out her Steam-powered Feet thanks to a very poorly timed kick. An assortment of bruises, scrapes, and a few broken bones. No corpses.

Two missing.

"What do they want with her?" Abner sounds on the edge of hysteria. 

The Prince lays a hand on his shoulder. Where he had been during the fight, Agatha didn't see, but half his coat is stained with green goo. "They can't want anything," he says gently. "Once they realize Pix isn't whoever -"

"What if they kill her then? What do the Spider Ladies want with an actress, anyway?"

"They won't hurt her if she just stays quiet," Tarvek snaps. "Now, why they took Tinka, that's - a problem."

"Tinka can look after herself," Otto offers. "It may be -"

Well, Tinka does have that electric trick, but apparently it wasn't enough to keep from being snatched to begin with. If the power were upgraded, maybe, or if the area of effect were larger - Agatha shakes her head to knock herself out of it. Tinka isn't here to modify, even if she agreed to it, even if Agatha thought she could work on a Van Rijn. 

Where have her Jägers gone? They might stand a chance against the Geisterdamen. Then again, they might not.

Tarvek and Abner have fallen into what would obviously be a screaming match if it weren't being conducted in whispers, with extravagant hand gestures, while Otto glowers at them both. Agatha feels a tap on her leg, and looks down. "They're not going to be done arguing anytime soon," Krosp tells her. "And _I_ need some supper."

In the tavern off the main square, Master Payne is doing his best to make up for the absence of a proper show with an impressive array of card tricks. Agatha doesn't feel like watching. She acquires a baked fish with oranges, and retreats to Baba Yaga's foot to split it with Krosp. 

He eats with less verve than usual, tail swishing in agitation. She finally asks, "Are you okay?"

"This is all wrong."

"I know, but we can't get them back without an army."

Krosp waves a paw. "Couldn't catch up anyway, those spiders move fast. Not what I meant. Why didn't they try _threatening_? And that wedge formation - that's good for breaking an infantry line, but for a raiding party? Look at how many casualties they took -"

Agatha cuts him off before he can get on more of a tactical rant. "So they're incompetent. Isn't that a good thing for us?"

"Not necessarily. It makes them unpredictable."

\--

The city gates of Balan's Gap are, according to tradition, shut tight until the Prince's funeral. No-one goes in or out. It takes Ardsley Wooster almost half an hour to sneak in through a disused storm drain.

The curfew has only made the taverns busier. Wooster picks one near the town hall, acquires a pint of what passes for ale out here in East Europa, and listens.

" ... finally go home, now we're all covered in ash," complains a man in a rumpled suit, with ink-stained hands.

"They've got giant snakes, everyone knows that."

"Not surprising, really."

"Losing a week's tolls, and even Passholdt might not be open this early."

" ... the moat. Bloke with canvas wings tried it last time, they didn't find enough to bury." This from an old lady in a lacy dress, with great relish. Wooster shudders.

"We'll be out of milk in three days, do they think we keep cows in our cellars?"

"Forget that, what about the docks?"

"I heard he set himself on fire and jumped out his lab window ..."

A tall woman in a tweed jacket offers, "Do you think Baron will confirm his son as the new prince?" The people in earshot expect so, although at least one is willing to impugn his masculinity at creative length.

Wooster orders some fried eggs, since he doubt he'll have another chance at breakfast, and nods sympathetically when the waitress complains about losing tourist custom.

" ... royal family are all nutters. Common knowledge."

"Smuggling's a lot harder on an airship, I know it doesn't ..."

"Never seen Selnikov that red."

"I don't know! They could be doing anything with her in there!" 

This from a dark-skinned girl, clutching her apron, looking terrified. Wooster decides to be helpful, and turns to her. "I'm sure it's not that bad, miss," he assures her.

Her blonde companion barks a laugh. "You new in town?"

"Well, yes. Just passing through. Or would be, if ..." He waves a hand to suggest the mess of the curfew. 

"Then you don't know what goes on at the castle."

"Nobody does, not right now, that's the _problem,_ " wails the distressed girl. "And I havn't seen her for three days, and somebody collapsed the tunnel!"

Wooster considers this. "You have a friend in the castle?"

She nods, apparently eager to unburden herself. "She works there. She's a lab assistant. And we meet up in the secret tunnel and she should have been there but there was just a big pile of rocks where the door used to be! I can't even go knock on the regular door, they turned the moat on!"

"Maybe," he says carefully, "there's another way in. Would you like me to help you look, miss?"

\--

The blonde girl is sceptical, but apparently finds two-to-one odds sufficiently reassuring. They descend through a grating as the eastern sky begins to glow.

The rockfall blocking the girls' usual meeting spot is thorough, recent, and professionally done. The blond girl curses and has a futile go at shifting rocks; Wooster and the dark-skinned girl debate alternate routes in. They spend a while examining the map someone helpfully left in a leather case near the entrance. Wooster spots three likely locations, judging by his memories of Paris. (He'd done his best to forget, after the thing with the mushrooms, but Wooster had been cursed with an excellent memory.)

He's burned most of the lead on the Wulfenbach forces that the fast flyer bought him. Still, between the lightning moat and Sturmhalten's artillery, he expects to get it back.

\--

The circus leaves at dawn. No one complains about losing sleep. Mechanicsburg has, legendarily, never fallen to attackers; at the moment that's a comforting thought.

Lars somehow ends up beside Agatha again. He keeps looking at her out of the corner of his eye. After about twenty minutes, Agatha gives up. "Lars? What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he says, and then, "Abner's fretting. It's contagious."

"Anyone who isn't fretting at this point must be missing half their brain." It takes effort to snap it and not scream. 

Lars takes a deep breath. Runs a hand through his hair. "We would play a week in Mechanicsburg, usually, but after the Ghost Ladies turned up - I don't know if Master Payne will want to stay somewhere safe, or run for it."

Agatha considers this. "Stay in Mechanicsburg, I'd think," she says. She would say _I'm sure they'll be welcome_ but she doesn't have that authority yet. Maybe she should come clean to Master Payne, privately. She hates the idea of the circus becoming a target.

And there's Lars, who may not even be much of a reader, but who said he was fond of her in the most amazing voice. Who is blushing a little as he asks, "Are you still staying there? You said you had family there."

Yes. Well. She nods encouragingly.

"I want to stay with you."

That was so unexpected it takes Agatha few seconds to process. She doesn't run Baba Yaga off the road this time, though. She just presses a hand to her face and starts to laugh.

"It's not that funny," Lars says, with an edge of injured dignity. "I would go back to the cheese mines for you, if necessary. Or tend bar, or juggle in the marketplace - did I mention I can juggle?" He gives a desperate grin.

Agatha grabs his collar and tugs him close for a kiss.

It's long, and not very deep, and she keeps half an eye on the road. When it breaks, she's blushing too. "That's the nicest proposal I've ever gotten."

"You, er, get many?"

Agatha looks at him. Really looks at him, this sweet man with his amazing voice who's just offered to throw away his future to spend it with her. She could be happy with him, she thinks. But it wouldn't be fair not to tell him, if she accepts.

Not yet. She'll tell him tonight.

"Prince Sturmvoraus offered to make me Queen of Europa yesterday," she says. "He wants to run a fake Heterodyne heir scam."

"Well. I can't compete with that." He sounds like he's desperately trying to sound casual. He glances involuntarily back at Baba Yaga, where Tarvek is still, hopefully, napping in Agatha's bed. It's a misty morning, just late enough to glow golden. The light catches his hair. 

"Of course not. You're giving me a _much_ better offer." Agatha allows herself a moment to enjoy his fond, hopeful look, then goes on: "I - still have to think, though. It's all very complicated."

"That's fair." Lars runs a hand through his hair again.

Agatha leans over for another kiss, a light one, just a brush of their lips. "Get an inn room tonight," she tells him. "We can - talk. _Privately._ "

"I'll do that."

"But right now, go see if you can stop Abner fretting, alright?"

\--


	4. Chapter 4

#### Chapter 4

"It doesn't make any sense," the blonde girl says again. "There were what, a hundred people working here? Plus the guests. They can't have dissolved."

Wooster desperately wants a cup of tea. He's not likely to get one, but the urge remains. "Perhaps some of them left the same way we came in."

"Some, fine. Have you even heard footsteps? Because I havn't heard footsteps."

The dark-skinned girl anxiously offers, "Does anyone else smell smoke?"

Five seconds later they're all running.

Down a corridor where the smoke is almost visible, up a flight of stairs on instinct - Wooster can't hear the fire, or feel any heat, but there are bits of soot everywhere. A pile of - things that might have been boards - thrown against a wall, as if a door had blown out. Wooster takes a deep breath, and looks through the empty doorframe.

It must have been a chapel, once. He can still make out statues and carved pillars around the edges, and the roof is high and arched. One high shattered window lets in a little light. The spaces where others should be are all dark - bricked over, he thinks numbly, but it came loose at that one window. Fire damage. The floor is a mass of soot.

In the centre of it all is something shaped like a burnt-out bonfire, except for a few intact pieces scattered alongside. Bits of brass and glass, and one leather strap that somehow escaped the conflagration.

The good news is that their enemies are _imbeciles_. 

Wooster can't take a deep breath here; he ducks back out to the corridor, which is little worse than a room full of pipe-smokers. The dark-haired girl is holding her apron to her nose. "Is it still on fire?" she asks, a little muffled.

"No." Tea. Perfectly brewed tea with half a spoon of sugar. "Where do you think we should check next, miss?"

"Servant's quarters," she says decisively. "Down a floor, keep going west."

They go back down the smoky stairs. The air clears up quickly enough. They go through a thick wooden door that looks original, and the carpet turns threadbare and the wall panelling vanishes for bare stone; it's suddenly obvious again that Sturmhalten was built as a _fortress_. There are windup lights on the walls, but they've all wound down. The blond girl takes one and starts cranking like she's trying to wring someone's neck.

The dark-skinned girl goes straight to the seventh door, rattles the knob, and then kicks it, to no effect. Then she slams her shoulder into it. Still nothing. She starts to curse, in a language Wooster doesn't recognize. "Allow me, miss," he says hurriedly, and pulls out his penknife. 

The lock is old and cheap. Wooster gets it with only a few seconds of fiddling. 

The room is a tiny, cluttered bedroom. A woman with two frizzled braids and wearing a crumpled labcoat is pressed against one wall, holding a large hammer. She doesn't move when the door opens.

"Manon?" The dark-skinned girl shoves past Wooster, and takes the woman by the shoulders. "Manon, it's me! We came to get you?" There's no response Wooster can see, but the girl mutters, "Alright," and grabs Manon by the elbow to tow her, stumbling, into the corridor.

As soon as she's out the door Manon's face lights up. "Rivka," she whispers, and draws her friend into a close embrace. Wooster finds himself looking away to give them a little privacy. "What's happening out there?"

"You don't know? What have you been doing?"

"Hiding! They told us to go to our rooms and stay there and stay quiet." 

For some reason this makes the blonde girl hiss, and her expression slides from disgruntled to furious. "Did you know Prince Aaronev is dead?" 

"I helped drag the body out of the acid tank. Yes. He is deader than anyone else I've ever seen. _What is going on?_ Where is everyone?"

Rivka crosses her arms. "We don't know. Let's go kick in some doors."

\--

The next half-dozen doors go similarly: servant's rooms with the inhabitants sitting quietly, silent until they are tugged outside, then giving the same   
story of bewilderment and orders to stay out of the way. After that Wooster suggests Manon take him to the Prince's lab. They leave the blonde girl in charge of getting everyone else out. Rivka refuses to stay behind. "I don't even know who you are," she interrupts, when he tries to point out the danger. "Why should I do what you say?"

He should lie, but his cover won't survive this regardless. "Ardsley Wooster. Imperial intelligence service." He doesn't say which Empire. He's honestly not sure right now. 

"Oh."

"I did get you safely into the castle, miss."

Her jaw sets. "Then I owe you."

Well, if anything does go wrong, she won't actually _worsen_ his odds. 

There are signs in the kitchens of an evacuation in haste: melted puddles of _crème escargot_ and a burnt side of beef still on the spit. Wooster holds his nose as they pass through. In what must be a servants' dining room next door, two tables are overturned. There's a network of pipes running along the ceiling; one is steadily dripping a sharp-smelling fluid onto the floor. They give it a wide berth, just in case. They take a narrow spiral stair, the kind, Wooster notes distantly, built right-handed to give a fighting advantage to someone going down it, and emerge back in the panelling and carpeting and brass fixtures.

The door to Prince Aaronev's lab is wide open. There's a faint smell of smoke drifting out. But, it turns out, whoever set the fire here had the courtesy to do it in a metal basin on a stone floor, and nothing spread. 

Rivka stares. Wooster looks at the mass of tubing and bubbling flasks on what must have been the Prince's worktable, and winces. He couldn't begin to guess what it does.

Manon circles the room, throwing open cabinets. "His notes are gone," she informs them, voice thick with disgust. "Burnt, most likely."

There's no fireplace here; that explains the basin. Wooster sighs. "You said you helped with the body, miss," he says. "Was everything in order then?"

"As far as I could tell," she answers slowly, "but I was a bit distracted."

"What more can you tell me about the circumstances of his death?"

"No one was here." Manon is fiddling with the ends of her braids, but there's plenty for her to be nervous about, Wooster thinks, even if she's being perfectly honest. "He didn't turn up for supper, so the butler sent in a footman to remind him, and he was lying with his head in the acid tank. They brought in all the lab assistants to help with the body. Count Hengst von Blitzengaard came to look, and then he said he was going to inform the Baron and he sent someone to turn on the moat - I didn't see who."

The name sounds familiar. "Hengst von Blitzengaard?"

"He was visiting." Manon shrugs. "I think he's some kind of cousin."

"Not Aaronev's son?"

"Prince Tarvek?" Manon seems surprised. "I don't know where he was."

_Around him, trust nothing you think you see,_ , Master Gilgamesh said. Wooster frowns. "Does he usually have supper with his father? Was he in the castle?"

"As far as I know. You'd have to ask the guards." Manon shrugs. "I know the Prince went to the theatre that night. His son might have gone somewhere afterwards."

Theatre. _Travelling show?_ "Do you know what theatre?"

"I think it was the Royal Theatre? Some travelling circus. He liked Heterodyne plays."

So: that's where Agatha Heterodyne _was_. It's too much of a coincidence, if the Prince simply happened to die while she was passing through. She must be involved.

But that doesn't explain Aaronev's death, or the fires. 

Assuming she had reason to visit his lab, assuming she was provoked, he can imagine Miss Agatha killing the Prince. He can't imagine her responsible for the rest. There was a secret here, something important enough that destroying it was more important than leaving it hidden. Who collapsed the secret passage? Why were the castle staff ordered to stay in their rooms and be silent, and why did they all obey so thoroughly? Was Aaronev trying out mind control on his servants? And if he was, why hide it? People have qualms about mind control, true, but it wouldn't be enough pretext for the Baron to take over. What had been in the chapel, before it was set on fire? Who else was in Sturmhalten with something to hide?

Too many questions. He needs to -

He needs to find Agatha Heterodyne and take her to England. The Baron's people can sort out the rest. He's no scientist, and certainly no Spark. Assuming he can find her.

"Herr Wooster," Rivka says, startling him out of his reverie. She's staring out a window, gone as pale as her face allows. "Were you expecting company?" 

She's looking up. But as Wooster watches, the airships begin to descend from the clouds. He knew he didn't have much of a lead. 

Wooster's mind is spinning as he tries to assess his possible moves. He can't possibly make a thorough search of the fortress himself, or even with the help of the castle servants, in the half-hour or so before the Baron's people barge in. If Agatha was spirited away down a secret passage - and Sturmhalten clearly has plenty - she could be halfway across Europa by now. But if she's still with the circus, he has a chance. All he needs to do is get Wulfenbach's troops to start with the castle itself.

"Are the artillery posts here kept manned? If you know, Miss Manon," he asks.

Manon blinks. "Of course. They don't want unauthorized landings in the courtyard."

"I need to unman them and send up some signals. Immediately. Will you show me the fastest way up?"

\--

The eastern artillery post is not, as it turns out, manned. It might be described as 'corpsed'.

Wooster examines the bodies as best he can without touching them. Both men died of stab wounds, it looks like. Both still have their pistols holstered. They were taken by surprise, or, if mind control was involved, ordered not to resist. The thought is sickening. So is the smell; they've been dead for, Wooster guesses, most of a day.

He sprints for the south tower down the wall-walk, hoping the battlements are tall enough to hide him. Or, more likely, that nobody's looking.

The south post is inconveniently up four flights of stairs. By the time he finds the corpses - three of them here, and still no sign of resistance - he's gasping for breath. Losing his touch, or maybe the smoke of the burnt-out chapel had more effect than he thought.

Not much point in checking the others. Even if there are survivors, they're not likely to start taking potshots at Wulfenbach troops. He throws open the munitions chests instead, looking for signal flares. 

There. White. Maybe the incoming troops will believe them, maybe not, but either way they'll draw attention to the castle.

He lights the fuses, hands only shaking a little, and is below the floor before anything goes bang.

\--

Agatha had expected they'd be stopped at the gate, questioned, maybe warned. The gates of Mechanicsburg seemed to demand it, with all the skeletons. And gargoyles. And teeth. The advertising posters don't really help.

But the only one watching is a young man with a broom, who waves to them with every appearance of delight.

Lars leans against her shoulder. "They're always very friendly here," he tells her quietly. "I suppose they figure travelling shows are good for tourism."

"Do you know what we're doing tonight?" She hopes she won't be required. The idea of the two of them playing Bill and Lucrezia here, where people knew the originals, is - a little unsettling.

"If we're not lucky, arguing about permits." Lars half-shrugs, with a rueful smile. "We didn't quite have time to send an advance man. But if Payne sorts things out, probably Race to the West Pole."

"Popular here?"

"Well, it's romantic." His smile drips away. "And there's no High Priestess."

They emerge from the toothed tunnel of the gate, and Agatha brings Baba Yaga up from its crouch as she looks around. 

It's bright, is the first thing she notices - buildings in all colours, red tile roofs without a speck of moss, and brass trilobites everywhere. It's _clean_. Well, important as tourism is here, they must want to make a good impression. She can hear a group of children singing a welcoming song, very nearly in tune. 

She looks up, and gasps. She somehow hadn't expected Castle Heterodyne to _loom_.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Lars sounds genuinely impressed.

For sheer size, yes. Also for stability, the way those turrets are tilted sideways without any sign of coming apart.

Agatha is a little surprised to find herself feeling indignant. Who would have done this to her beautiful castle? She'll find them. Eventually. And she'll make them pay.

\--

"He said he was with the Imperial Intelligence Service," Prince Aaronev's lab assistant explains. Former lab assistant, that is, of the late Prince. Klaus resists the urge to groan. 

"And he told you nothing else about what he was looking for?"

"No. He said wanted to signal the fleet, so we told him how to get to the artillery posts, and then we came back down to help with - " She waves a hand at the milling servants at the other end of the courtyard. "We were still missing thirty people when you landed, Herr Baron."

Thirty assorted cooks, cleaners, and clerks, could not have been responsible for this. There's something the girl isn't saying. But Klaus can't blame her for that; the wasp-eaters have been screaming since they landed. Apparently there's no one in town whose will is entirely their own.

"Herr Baron!" A sergeant from the 7th Groundnaut is hurrying up. Klaus turns to him. "Herr Baron, we've found another blocked tunnel. Going down."

"How deep?" All the possible reasons for this are unpleasant ones.

"About a hundred meters below the surface. Off our maps." The sergeant wipes his brow. "There was slime in the tunnel. Possible monster infestation."

"Take a flame squad, then. Start clearing a path."

"Yessir." He salutes, spins on his heel, and sprints away.

Klaus takes a second for a few deep breaths. No sign of Miss Clay, all Aaronev's notes gone, and that mess in the chapel, which will take days to comb through properly. He can't trust anyone from Sturmhalten to tell the truth. There are no good options for dealing with the town - these are _people_ , going about their ordinary lives, but they're threats, because who knows what they were ordered to do?

It's not a remnant of an old infestation. Balan's Gap was never attacked. The Other vanished sixteen years ago, and the wasp eaters have responded to people who weren't even born then.

Aaronev was always Lucrezia's slave.

"Herr Baron?" The lab assistant is clutching at her braid, but her expression is intent. "There are -" she breaks off, then says, in a rush, "I don't know anything at all about people living in the deep-down. The Ghost Ladies are just a story, nobody's really seen them."

He hadn't asked her anything, which means this is a very deliberate lie. (Unless someone thought to leave orders to mislead - no. That's not a useful train of thought.) Reverse it, and - well, it might explain the blocked tunnels. And it gives them a clue what to expect.

Ghost Ladies -

Klaus is increasingly sure Lucrezia is behind this, but he hopes Lucrezia is behind this, and it's easy to talk yourself into things. He hopes Agatha Clay is innocent, if only for Gil's sake. He hopes this is all a misunderstanding. But the Baron has to be sure.

\--


	5. Chapter 5

#### Chapter 5

"You'd think there would be guards," Zeetha breathes. She looks at the bridge again, frowning. "What do you think would happen if we just walked up and knocked on the door?"

Agatha considers this. It seems absurd that there _wouldn't_ be guards, here at the Empire's most notorious prison. "Guards would turn up. We can look for a secret entrance."

"One nobody's used to escape in the last fifteen years?" 

"They might not have found it. Or been able to open it." Agatha frowns. "Lilith did say the castle would help me ..."

Krosp's tail twitches. "No sense rushing," he says. "We should gather more intelligence." He says it in a low growl, so it doesn't carry to anyone walking past. Probably not a necessary precaution, in Mechanicsburg; there aren't so many visible constructs as on Castle Wulfenbach, but there's certainly no fear of Sparks.

There were street hawkers selling maps of the secret passages beneath Mechanicsburg, and advertising tours. It won't be obvious.

"How guarded are the walls?" she asks.

Zeetha looks up at the walls, as if she were admiring them. "Nothing visible, but there must be something hidden. They're trying to keep _Sparks_ in there."

"Suceeding," Krosp helpfully adds. "Nobody's ever escaped."

How worried should she be about getting out again? "I could build something to go through the wall, maybe," she muses. "Where do you buy acid vats in Mechanicsburg? A modified - "

But Zeetha, recognizing the signs of an approaching fugue, has taken her by the arm to hustle away.

\--

The burgermeister's office closes at half past four; at five, as is her habit, his secretary is looking through his confidential papers. As usual, even the papers of diplomatic interest aren't interesting. She wishes for an interruption, an excuse to take a break.

There's a knock on the window.

Violetta recognizes the face, even upside down. It's the same one pinned to her dartboard. Three strides, and she's throwing the casements open. "You know," she starts, "we have a door."

"On a public street," her cousin answers, face impassive. "Give me _some_ credit."

"What are you even doing here? Two years I've been working in this stupid office and you never even wrote me a letter." She crosses her arms. 

Her cousin drops neatly inside, with a thump. Out of practice, or just incompetent; Smoke Knights shouldn't thump. "Come to the Red Hat Inn at eleven. Things are moving faster than any of us anticipated. At least Tweedle's plan has been - overtaken by events." That expression might, on a less controlled face, have been gloating. "I need you, Violetta. I need someone I can trust to find things out, someone who isn't working for Grandmother."

"So you're stuck with me?" 

She leans back. Her cousin leans forward, eyes bright, and brushes the hair away from her temple. "Unless things go extrordinarily well."

"You enigmatic bastard."

"Can I? Trust you, that is."

She's not angry. Violetta couldn't sustain her anger, not after the last letter she did get. There are old obligations in play here. If nothing else, whatever her cousin is planning will be more interesting than office work. And - if she isn't with them, she can't manipulate them. "Of course you can trust me, Tarvek," she lies.

\--

The show is over by ten-thirty. Lars finds his hands shaking as he changes into his own shirt. Nerves, he tells himself. First-night jitters. Playing in Mechanicsburg puts them all on edge, and since he was playing Bill, he'd have it worst if they were horribly offended and started throwing things. Whatever Mechanicsburgers would throw. Snails? Explosives? They are a terribly - scientifically-inclined bunch of townspeople.

In fact, they cheered and whooped. Lars is almost sure the scared-looking couple in the back row were tourists.

He meets Agatha behind the wagons, and takes her hand as they walk over to the inn. They don't speak. A week ago he would have thought he knew what she wanted a _room_ for, but a week ago they had Pix and Tinka still with them, a week ago he hadn't known the Ghost Ladies went into battle, a week ago the circus wasn't on the run from - whoever was in charge at Sturmhalten now. If they are on the run. Certainly the Prince seemed to think so.

At the inn Agatha ducks into the kitchens, and emerges shortly afterward with a crab sandwich. "I didn't get dinner," she tells Lars, blushing a little, as they head for their room. "Things were - busy."

"Family not glad to see you?" He tries to make a joke of it. "Or were they just afraid of Zeetha?"

"I wasn't actually visiting family," Agatha admits, and locks the door. The bolt clicks louder than it has any right to. When Agatha turns back to him, she looks determined. A little sad, maybe, which doesn't suit her. "I have to tell you something."

"Tell away." He pats the bed beside him in invitation - there's a chair, but the spindly sort more useful for leaving clothes on than sitting. 

"If you don't believe me, or if you just want nothing to do with it, that's fine. Just go back to your wagon and forget everything. Leave town and pretend we never met."

Lars considers this. He wants to say something florid and romantic, _nothing could drive me from your side_ or _you're worth any trouble_ , but that feels like it would be an insult to Agatha. He settles for, "I already gave notice to Master Payne."

"He'd take you back."

"I meant it about the cheese mines."

Agatha folds her arms and scowls. "You wouldn't _have_ to work. Assuming we all live. I'm the Heterodyne, I think the job comes with tribute."

Lars's brain skitters to a halt.

That - explains some things. She's a Spark, fine, he's met plenty, but she's a step above anyone in the circus. The death ray she used on the monster horse worked terrifyingly well. The Jägermonsters that were following them could have been following her. He can't think of anything to disprove it. Still, the idea is so big it doesn't quite fit in his mind.

Agatha has a hand on his neck, like she's checking his pulse. "Lars?"

"Uh. How?" It's not a very clever response, but it's the best he can manage.

"I'm Bill and Lucrezia's daughter," she tells him, and then begins to explain the rest.

\--

When Krosp appears beside her on the roof, Zeetha hands over his jacket without a word. His tail whips back and forth as he pulls it on. "This town," he announces, "has entirely too many fish."

"I thought you liked fish."

"Not when they're trying to eat me. I don't think the Heterodyne Boys cleaned this place up nearly as well as people say." Krosp settles down, tail curled around his feet and still twitching. "Although the hospital is very nice. Crawling with Wulfenbach spies. Avoid it."

"I'd expected as much." She crosses her arms. "How about the rest of the town? Do people feel much loyalty to the Baron?"

"Not enough to actually do what he tells them." Krosp sounds amused. "The burgermeister keeps insisting on disabling some of the town defenses, and people keep repairing them. They're proud of being dangerous."

Zeetha blinks. "Disabling? Why?"

"They don't all point _outside_ the walls."

"Ah."

"I think the whole town is a little scientifically-inclined, as they say. Didn't see anyone spitting at constructs. Almost everyone carries a watch. I heard a boy who can't have been past twelve talking about how much better things were when the Masters were around." His whiskers twitch. "If Agatha gave them proof ..."

"What proof would they accept?" 

"I'm not sure. We'll have to keep listening."

\--

There are five of them shoved into the inn room: Agatha, Lars, Krosp, Zeetha, and Tarvek. Even given that one of them is a cat, it's uncomfortably close. Lars is sitting beside Agatha on the bed, not quite close enough to touch. He'd rather be hiding behind her, honestly. This isn't the place for him.

This is a war council.

Sure enough, Prince Tarvek's first question is, "Agatha, why is Lars here? This doesn't -" 

"Because I trust him," she snaps, "which is more than I can say for _you_."

The Prince leans back in the rickety chair. "We have interests in common," he tells her brightly. "You need me if you're going to be acknowledged as the Heterodyne."

"Don't be so sure, mister!" Krosp's tail is lashing back and forth, and his claw is practically in the Prince's nose; Lars can see his eyes cross trying to focus on it. "She's a better Spark than you!"

Is that really a wise thing to say? The Prince must have worked out she's a Spark, it's obvious, but boasting about it - what are the odds he'll notice who she really is? Should they just admit it? Does he know already? Does this have anything to do with why the Geisterdamen want her so badly? 

Lars bites his lip and doesn't say anything. He's not a strategist. His job is to do what Agatha asks him to.

"I have more information, though," the Prince goes on, smirking slightly. "Do you know about the twelve separate Castle entities? Can you operate Fra Pelligatti's Lion? The Knights of Jove have been planning their takeover of Mechanicsburg for years. If we're going to outrun them, we can't afford to start from scratch. I know you don't trust me, my lady, but we can't afford to make seperate plans."

"I'm not your lady."

"If we win, you'll be everyone's." His smile is dazzling. 

Agatha is unmoved. "Earn some trust, then. Tell me this grand plan of yours."

The Prince makes it sound like a story, the way he launches into it. He starts with the Castle, what happened to it nineteen years ago and what they think it is now, He talks about their method for killing it - the explanation goes right over Lars's head, but he can see Agatha brightening as she asks something about harmonic disruption in the third phase, and they go off on a Sparky tangent for several animated minutes before Krosp starts to growl. The Prince tells them about the long-term plans, the careful sucession of fairy-tale plots. Those make a little more sense. Lars can imagine people flocking to the banner of the Storm King; some legends have more power as they grow old. Agatha points out, sensibly, that all those plans depend on the cooperation of people the Prince has just betrayed. The Prince waves a hand in airy dismissal. "Most of them will accept the inevitable," he says. "And if any of them do turn up with an army, destroying them will make a good show of intent."

Beside the door, where she could stop anyone going through it, Zeetha's been still and quiet. There's something off about her; it reminds Lars of the dark moods she spent so much time in, before Agatha turned up. But she speaks up now. "How long do we have until the Ghost Ladies come back? They must be angry, letting their Holy Child slip away like that." 

That depends, maybe, on how long Pix can keep up her Spark accent. Lars doesn't say anything.

"We don't have to worry," Krosp says. "I guarantee they can't get through the walls here in less time than Wulfenbach can send a fleet to blow them to bits."

"Doesn't having a Heterodyne again make Mechanicsburg an independent state?" Agatha's expression is unnervingly calculating. "Can we rely on any Wulfenbach assistance?"

"Against the Geisterdamen? After what he's no doubt found in Sturmhalten by now?" The Prince raises an eyebrow. "He's not _that_ hard-headed a negotiator. He does have a reputation to consider."

"Still, I'd rather not need the help." 

"If you can even get the Castle running before they show up." Krosp seems weirdly cheerful about this. Lars wonders what he's got up his sleeve. "Maybe they've worked it out already, and any -"

Lars barely gets a hand over his mouth in time, hissing, " _Don'tsayotdon'tsayit_." Krosp must be too suprised to bite. "Do you _want_ them to blow the roof off?"

Zeetha is smothering a giggle. Agatha looks sceptical. Lars lets go, and Krosp hisses. "I didn't use a _negative_. I'm not stupid."

"He has a point," Agatha says. "I don't even know how I'm going to get inside the castle. I imagine your people had a clever plan for that, Tarvek?"

"It required an airship." The Prince shrugs. "Of course, we could just walk up to the gates. They don't pay the guards to keep people _out_."

The next ten minutes are spent on a lively discussion of the merits of hiding in the supply wagon when the next food delivery for the prisoners goes in, acquiring an airship and making a dramatic entrance, or just walking in with the threat of Agatha's death ray to get them past the guards, and the 'stun' setting to make it inarguable if that's not enough. Consensus seems to drifting toward the third choice when the distant jangle of the Cathedral's midnight bell interrupts. Agatha sighs, head in her hands. "We're not getting in _tonight_ ," she declares. "Everyone go away and get some sleep. I'll decide in the morning."

"Of course, Lady Heterodyne." The Prince manages to make ducking away from the rafter look like a bow. Zeetha grins and gives them a little wave as she heads out the door, and the Prince follows.

Lars tries to stand up, which is when he realizes Agatha is holding on to his belt. "Er?"

"Not you."

Krosp makes a noise with an unfortunate tinge of hairball. "You get to be in on the real planning session," he informs Lars in an undertone. "Hang about."

A few tense seconds later, Zeetha slips back inside, looking wary. "He's gone," she says softly, "but I think someone else was listening." 

"Well, don't _tell_ them," Krosp hisses.  
"Nah, it's fine," Zeetha says, and crosses the room in a sudden blur of motion. The windowpanes bang open, and a sudden breeze rushes through the room. Lars leans back, Agatha stands up, and Krosp is already out the window, bouncing off Zeetha's shoulder as she rises to the sill in one step, propelling herself up, and there's a yelp of alarm from a voice he doesn't recognize. Something goes thump. Agatha is at the window, leaning out, and Zeetha is invisible, and suddenly there's a noise of ripping fabric and there's someone in purple being hauled into the room by her cloak, trying to bat Krosp off her head. Lars hisses. Agatha drops the figure in purple on the bed beside him, with a thump, and grabs them by one arm - her, it's a woman, with red hair under the furious pile of cat. 

In the spirit of helpfulness, Lars grabs her other arm. "Sorry about this, ma'am," he offers. 

"Hey!" 

Krosp must think she's sufficiently grabbed; he leaps to the floor and begins to dust off his paws. "Tell us what you're up to or the claws come back," he suggests. 

"I'm on your side, you know," she snaps. "My idiot cousin said you need a Smoke Knight, so here I am. Highly trained Smoke Knight ready to walk into the castle full of death traps. Except it looks like you've got that covered, which means this is all some stupid trick my cousin is trying to pull and didn't even bother to tell me about." She does her best to cross her arms and look furious.

Zeetha drops into view again, landing heavily on the sill. "Stupid cousin?"

"You know. The redhead with the glasses and the inflated ego. I said we're on the same side. I was supposed to make sure no one _else_ was listening."

"Well, were they?" Agatha's smile is a little too bright. 

"No! My cousin is an idiot! Nothing happens here, it's just a giant tourist trap!"

"How long have you been following us?" Zeetha jumps down to the floor, and adjusts her scabbards. It doesn't look casual. 

"What?" The woman in purple blinks in what, if Lars is any judge, is genuine confusion. He relaxes a little as she goes on, "You've been sitting right here for an hour. I didn't have to follow you."

Agatha must have noticed it too, because she lets go of the woman's arm. "So, not from Sturmhalten."

"I have spent the last three years in this _ridiculous_ town full of _wannabe minions_ and _snail enthusiasts_ and if you don't believe me, ask at the Burgermeister's office. I'm his secretary." She finally crosses her arms, to go with the indignant look. 

Agatha seems to be thinking this over, brows narrowed in an expression of deep concentration that makes Lars's heart beat faster, although he's not sure if it's with adoration or terror. Maybe both. It feels like an eternity before she says, "Fine."

"Fine?"

"I don't know if I believe you, but you're not trying to kill us and I can use all the help I can get. So, go be helpful." She points at the door. "Go tell Tarvek we found you, and we're supposed to be on the _same_ side, and if he pulls something _stupid_ like this again I'll _remove his brain_ and replace him with _someone smarter!_ " It's beautiful, but Lars really hopes there's no one in the room below. Or if there is, they assume it's a late-night rehearsal. 

Their spy looks appropriately terrified, but she manages to mutter, "That wouldn't be difficult."

" _Go!_ "

When the room is a little emptier again Zeetha sighs. "Now we hold the real planning session?"

"No," Agatha says, through her hands. She's slumped over, the picture of exasperation. Lars ventures a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Now we give up and play it by ear."

"Fair enough. I'll bring you breakfast, how's that?" She scoops up a protesting Krosp as she walks out, almost looking like her usual self.

Lars tries to stand up to follow, but Agatha's hand is on his waistband again, and she tugs him back down. She doesn't say anything. After a few breaths he ventures, "Agatha?"

"Stay," she says, without looking up.

"If you want." His voice is wavering; he doesn't know how he's not gibbering, after that mess. "Uh, do you -"

"Stay," she repeats, and grabs him by the back of the neck, and kisses him.

"Oh. Oh!"

\--

Mechanicsburg was so obvious a place to go next that Wooster spent most of the way there fretting. But, he reasoned, his quarry was sure to turn up there before too long. If she had left Balan's Gap by wagon just before the gates were closed, he wasn't more than a day behind her. He strolled into town in the predawn glow, feeling desperately in need of tea and vaugely smug. 

Tea first. He's settled into a window table at a place that calls itself the Sausage Factory, sipping tea and waiting for a plate of horribly continental croissants, when a hand descends on his shoulder. 

Wooster reflects as he stares at the tea-covered table and tries not to gibber that more than five hours sleep might have helped, too. 

"Hey! Hey, relax, it's just me. Are you okay?" Theo DuMedd, of all the improbable meetings, leans in and looks at him sideways. "What are you doing here, anyway? Don't tell me you quit."

They hadn't spoken much - a few anxious conversations as Theo tried to check on his old friend and Wooster tried to explain without giving offense that Gil wasn't taking visitors - but Wooster had formed a positive impression of the young man, and it is a combination of that positive impression and his desperation that makes him say, "No. Quite the opposite. Truth be told, I'm in a bit of trouble." He would say _a pickle_ , but the idiom doesn't translate.

Theo pulls out the other chair without asking, and thumps down with the air of a man determined to get some answers. But the next thing he says is, "Can I help?" 

Of course. This is _Theo_.

Wooster takes a deep breath, and does his poor best not to blow his cover.

By the time he's explained, well, as much as is possible to explain, Theo is looking quite cheerful. He proposes they check the Greens, the obvious place for a travelling show, and Wooster acquieses in the abscence of any better ideas. It's turning into a bright, warm day, the streets are full of tourists, and they start to hear muttering about the Wulfenbach patrol ship three blocks before they see it. The last two blocks of street proper they take at a run. 

He doesn't recognize the envelope shape, and it lacks the usual winged-castle emblem, but the guns are very prominent. So are the two soldier-clanks at the foot of its ramp, standing impassive as a bald man in a Seventh Police Battalion uniform listens to a bald man in a waistcoat and no shirt explain, with emphatic annoyance, that he doesn't have the least idea where Agatha Clay is. 

Only two clanks, for all there are half a dozen uniformed men. A squad more suited to bodyguarding a diplomatic guest than tracking down as escaped prisoner. One small ship, and the plan is barely forming in Wooster's head before he's pulling the gun from his pocket. But Theo's hand on his elbow restains him. "Do you know," he says in an undertone, "that all Wulfenbach airships use glycophosphorate fire-retardant on the envelope?"

"My gun's not battery-powered," he answers. It's good to know they had the same thought. 

"Here, use my infraradio, I'll cause a distraction." Theo presses something into his hand. Then he throws himself into the crowd, using his elbows, already shouting.

There's no time to waste. Wooster is already hurrying behind the crowd as he works it out. The infraradio is about as big as a pack of cards and most of that is battery; he only has to snap off a bit of case to get at it. They're not looking this way at all. Very careless. Wooster dodges around a brightky-painted wagon as he works, then stops behind a thick-trunked tree to finish up; in front of the crowd Theo is angrily demanding the bald man's arrest warrant in the name of the Mechanicsburg Watch. Wooster hopes he's carrying something vaugely badge-shaped. This battery casing is entirely too good. But with a few internal curses, he cracks it, shoves in a bit of wire ripped from the vacuum tube section, and starts setting up the fuse.

Timing. Timing is important.

Now Theo is, from what he can hear over the murmuring crowd, calling the bald man a jumped-up mimmoth inspector. The bald man is saying, "I'm sure we can settle this quietly -"

It's the best cue he's likely to get, and Wooster lets fly. 

The shorted battery starts to explode before it hits the envelope, but in its metal casing there's plenty of shrapnel and a very satisfying boom. It must have hit a seam. There's a very satisfying gash, and the fabric is already merrily smoking. Not the most _elegant_ sabotage job, but effective, and one of the few that could be implemented from twelve meters away. 

The soldier-clanks don't react at all. It's good to have his suspicions confirmed. One of the human soldiers is shrieking, though, and several guns have materialized. It's not important; without their airship all they can do is bluster. Wooster is already halfway around, keeping behind the crowd. He barely pays attention to the sound of Theo informing the bald man he's under arrest. The real Watch will turn up soon enough. He'd like to make sure Agatha is out of sight by then.

Of course, he has to find her first.

There are perhaps two dozen wagons in the immediate vicinity. She could be hiding in any of them, if she has sense. Or in any building in town. Or - lurking in the back of the crowd, if she'd rather run than hide. Wooster spots a flash of long blond hair, and starts ducking toward it.

Wooster soon gets close enough to tell the long hair is on a middle-aged man, and detours toward the nearest wagon. He's jiggling its doorlatch when someone taps his shoulder. Mustering an indignant look, he spins around. The tap came from a woman with long green hair and a bright, dangerous grin, and a knife held not really near him, but in a way suggesting she could stab him without difficulty if he argued. "Hello, ma'am," he ventures.

Her grin widens. "Hello, Mister Wooster." Alright, that's a very bad sign. "Are you with the idiots out there?"

He does his best to keep up the indignant look. "Ma'am, they're not even Wulfenbach troops."

"Thought not," she says, and her grin widens. "But you can call me Zeetha! Because we're going to be friends. Come on, let's go talk somewhere quieter."

\--


	6. Chapter 6

Gil has spent the days since Wooster left in a sleepless haze, trying to get his patients repaired enough to transfer them to the Great Hospital; the message that his father wanted to see him had come just after he put them in the tanks, which is either luck, or proof that Klaus knows more about Gil's secret lab than he admits. It will take a few more days of monitoring electrolyte levels before they can be safely moved, but - in the worst case, well, Zoing knows to make it Klaus's problem. 

He walks in to Klaus's lab with a sinking heart, again, to find his father being icy and snappish with a stocky, dark-haired man in a uniform he doesn't recognize. The man is babbling, "We've never had this happen before, the Mechanicsburg jail is very secure, it's not as if we can just throw them in the Castle -" 

"For impersonating Wulfenbach soldiers and trying to abscond with a person of interest to the Empire?" It's more of a hiss than a yell; Gil winces in sympathy. "It's where they would have gone once they'd been questioned. Did you even get _around_ to that?"

"Burgermeister Zuken thought we should wait for a representative of -"

"Of _course_ he did," Klaus growls. "You can tell him he's been removed from his post." He pauses, breathing heavily, visibly trying to get ahold of himself, at least for a few seconds. "Did anyone think to detain the girl they were looking for?"

"I, I don't think that - that anyone even saw her," the terrified messenger manages. "Does she exist?"

"She exists, she may be the greatest threat to the peace of Europa in twenty years, and it's no surprise that Smoke Knights are after her." Klaus rolls his eyes at the messenger's strangled gurgle. "You couldn't have been expected to hold on to them. But you - no," he interrupts himself, and spins around. "No, we don't have time to waste. Gilgamesh!"

He almost jumps. He's been running through a hundred possibilites, hoping that if Smoke Knights - he knew this was the weasel's fault - were caught hunting her in Mechanicsburg, it means Agatha got there safely. Or got away clean, and he can find her in England when the dust settles. "Yes, Father?"

"Come with me," Klaus says, and storms out of the room. There's really no other word for it.

Gil follows, pulled along helplessly in his wake. Is he going to send troops to Mechanicsburg? The deployment to Sturmhalten had been more than they needed. Not more than they would have needed, if the Ghost Ladies had been preparing an insurrection instead of fleeing. The logical move, if his father wants to capture Agatha, would be to seal Mechanicsburg and go over it with an inspection team. Assuming she's there at all; the last verified sighting anyone has was the night at the theatre in Balan's Gap -

He doesn't get these flashes of insight as easily as Klaus does, but Gil can put clues together sometimes, when it's important. He's spent months trying to catch his father being wrong about something. Anything. 

If he's very lucky, his father will be wrong about one more thing. 

"She's not there," he says. "The Smoke Knights are looking in the wrong place."

No need to specify who _she_ is. They turn toward the Situation Room, down a narrow coridoor lit by tiny green electric lamps on strings; Gil's never known why. Klaus says, "Explain."

Klaus will have worked it out himself. This is just confirming his prejudices. "That was a desperation move in Mechanicsburg," Gil begins, "but there must have been a reason for it. Someone saw Agatha in Sturmhalten and told them." Which means someone _recognized_ her, and there's an obvious candidate to care about Lucrezia's daughter; he doesn't need to say it. "It can't be a coincidence that someone killed Prince Aaronev. You still havn't found his son - I don't know what Tarvek would want with a Heterodyne heir, but if it was something different from his father, he could have claimed Aaronev was assainated to the Ghost Ladies, grabbed Agatha, and run away with them. Wherever they went. We don't have a hope of following."

"The Vespiary Squads are trying," Klaus says, but his footsteps have slowed. He stops, face outlined eerily in the green glow. "One of the burnt machines - there were components similar to Lucrezia Mongfish's early conciousness tranferral devices. If Aaronev was cold enough to destroy his own old body, he's gotten more logical, but don't assume we're dealing with Tarvek. Aaronev might have wanted everyone else hunting dahus."

The implications of that remark make Gil feel slightly sick, but he can't do anything for whatever poor young man Aaronev took over, if that's true. He hurries on. "We'll still want to question the circus, but it's more important to track the Ghost Ladies."

Klaus has an expression of tense concentration, the kind Gil has only seen before when he's going over experimental notes. He waits, trying not to do anything to make his nervousness obvious. Battles of wits with Klaus can only be won by ambush and sabotage. There's a satisfaction to it, though. Sometimes in Paris Gil felt like he was the only one immune to some wit-dulling chemical that a Spark with more vindictiveness than sense had dumped in the water supply. Oh, there were plenty of people who were experts on one little thing, but as soon as you tried to follow a train of thought toward a different field, even something as simple as using Ponchartrain's statistical algorithms to predict economic bubbles, they stared as if you were speaking in tongues. Even the Sparks needed things explained in pieces. The friendships Gil managed were easy and heartfelt and unsatisfying on some soul-deep level. Colette had been the shining exception when it came to conversation, but she was capricious, secretive, and ultimately, not a Spark. 

He'd never noticed, until he went to Paris. He'd been too busy feeling slow and stupid next to his father.

"We'll have to send Questors to everyone who might have sent the Smoke Knights. And to Mechanicsburg," Klaus growls. Gil would cheer, but that would give the game away.

\--

The noise of the door shutting behind them makes a painful echo that must have taken some enterprising architect ages to perfect. Agatha sighs. She should have expected high drama. 

"It's smaller than I was expecting," Sleipnir says, and her voice echoes off the celing.

Tarvek is busily spinning dials on a cylindrical device he produced from his coat pocket. One last click, and it sends a beam of soft white light dancing over the twisting, tentacular ceiling carvings. "The Red Gate is much more impressive, but this one leads into a dead area."

"Er. As opposed to live areas?" Theo sounds more fascinated than nervous.

"This is Castle Heterodyne," Tarvek informs him blandly. "It's only _haunted_ in the same sense as every human body."

Theo grins. "So there really is a mind running it?" 

"Possibly as many as twelve." Tarvek waves the light over the floor. "But Tiktoffen can tell us if they've found anything else useful. Come on." He clicks off the light and strides forward, apparently satisfied.

Well, if he wants to be the one who runs headlong into danger, Agatha's not going to argue. She falls into step behind him, fingering her death ray. Whatever horrible things they may have to deal with, at least they're well-equipped. Theo and Sleipnir were outfitting for an expedition, and they have enough creative weaponry between them to take out anything in the Wastelands. Agatha has her death ray, and half a backpack full of little clanks. 

Zeetha has her swords. She'd turned down anything else.

The Castle has a dusty, cold smell, like a disused but well-built cellar. The only lights are a smattering of electric lamps, tucked into corners, just enough to see where they're going, until they turn a corner and the bright midday sun is suddenly stabbing through a broken window, high above. It seems like such an obvious escape route Agatha decides it must lead to an inner courtyard. "Be careful from here," Tarvek tells them. "We're almost at the inhabited part of the castle."

Agatha can almost hear Zeetha rolling her eyes. "I don't think the _humans_ will be what we need to worry about."

Tarvek doesn't answer. They turn down a hallway with a ceiling only three meters high, arched and decorated with multicolored tiles. It would be a nice effect, in lighting that wasn't a dull furnace-red.

It ends in double doors; they look completely ordinary except for the femur-shaped handles. Not even real femurs. Bronze castings, from the look of it. Agatha feels obscurely dissapointed in her ancestors. Tarvek doesn't hesitate before shoving them open.

The room on the other side is huge and octagonal, lit by the same eerie red glow. There are bedrolls shoved against the walls, a table with the abandoned dishes of a half-dozen meals, but right now the only occupant is a balding man in a leather jacket, who was writing in a notebook. Now he's staring at them, fists half-raised in an instuctive gesture of self-defence, mouth open in shock.

"Hello, Professor," Tarvek says, beaming. "I don't suppose the Council have been keeping you up with the news?"

"What - you aren't - they said you'd vanished!" This must be Professor Tiktoffen, then. He looks completely flummoxed. "What on earth are you doing here? Who are these people? It isn't _time_!"

"Professor, have you never heard the saying that when opportunity knocks, you must welcome it in and club it over the head?" Tarvek's smile is so sharp it makes Agatha want to burst out giggling. "This is Agatha Heterodyne, and these are her friends. We're here to fix the Castle. With your able assistance, of course."

Tiktoffen is staring at Agatha as if she were a cabbage plant that had suddenly attempted to savage his dog. Agatha crosses her arms and glares right back. Two can play that game. "Should I have brought the Jägerhorde with us instead?"

Theo snickers. Tiktoffen visibly pulls himself together. "We, ah, weren't expecting you to actually turn up," he says.

Ooh. Ooooh, does she ever want to go at him with a truth serum. Both of them. But they're here for a reason; she can sort Tiktoffen out later. "Well, here I am. Are you going to help us?"

"Do I have a choice?" 

His eyes keep darting over to Zeetha, who's grinning. "We could knock you over the head and leave you here while we stole your notes," she offers. "It's not like we don't have enough Sparks."

"Right. They're, ah, they're in my office. You know," he adds accusingly to Tarvek, "you can't expect the Council to just _go along_ with this. It's one thing if you're leading Van Bulen around by the nose, but Ma-"

All the glib brightness has dropped away from Tarvek's face. "That pack of mummers? They wouldn't recognize their own wife in a new wig. I've taken care of them. Don't worry."

\--

It's not very often that Carson von Mekkhan turns up in a coffeehouse, especially not this one. It's his grandson's domain, and entirely too noisy for his tastes. Desperate times.

"Do we know anything about her?" he asks, keeping his voice low in the probably futile hope of not being overheard. 

Vanamonde bites his lip. "She's only been with the circus three months. She claimed to gave family in Mechanicsburg." He gives a helpless shrug. "She got into the Castle with four other people, so she can't have been spreading the claim around."

 _The Heterodyne must enter alone_ has been a useful piece of theater before. It's let Carson hold back and save loyal minions when the more delusional Heterodyne claimants turn up with them; mostly, once they had a good wail, they were willing to settle in and wait for the real one. Carson only wishes the Castle didn't take it so seriously. "Who were they?"

"Those two adventurers who were staying at Madam Vilxna's, the swordswoman from the circus, and someone who looked very like Prince Tarvek Sturmvoraus of Sturmhalten." He buries his face in his hands. "Also, the Smoke Knight from the Burgermeister's office has vanished, but not the one from the hospital. We could be looking at factional rivalry. I wish they'd keep that sort of thing out of Mechanicsburg."

So does Carson; it typically leads to inconvenience and spare bodies, and there are only so many minor sparks in town to sell them to. He takes another gulp of coffee. It really is good coffee, at least. 

Vanamonde sighs and lifts his head. "Well, if she believes she's a Heterodyne, it will all be over quickly. I just hope the circus doesn't make a fuss."

"They should know better."

"Is Wulfenbach going to interfere?"

He doesn't think so, but if this really is the point of a conspiracy, if the Fifty Families are involved, Klaus might send a questor. Carson is almost sure they can send the poor fool out of town with no real notion of what happened. It will take time and trouble, and - "Warn everyone now to expect a Questor. I hope they'll enjoy the challenge."

He won't. He's too old for this. Vanamonde might think fooling the Baron is a wonderful sport, but Carson would rather be at home baking gingerbread than sitting in a cafe scheming and plotting; he was supppsed to have retired nineteen years ago. If there's ever a true Heterodyne again he won't live to see it, and Carson is getting sick of the fakers.

\--

Inside Castle Heterodyne, the true Heterodyne heir is getting nervous.

Tiktoffen and Tarvek have been carrying on a whispered argument, not so quietly Agatha can't hear every word. Tiktoffen is convinced that Fra Pelagatti's Lion won't actually work without a shipment of parts that hasn't arrived yet; Tarvek wants to try to assemble it anyway. Tiktoffen thinks they'll do best sending for help. Tarvek suggests that asking for help from the Council would be one of the last mistakes Tiktoffen ever made, given the mess things are in.

"By Gwangi, they're no good at subtle," Zeetha mutters to Agatha. "Is there an actual plan in all that ranting or were they going to run around hitting things with a Heppler wrench until they broke the castle?"

"Shush. They're on our side."

"In theory," Zeetha says, but she subsides. 

The thing that's making Agatha nervous, right now, is that ever since the dramatic, overdone voice at the gate bid them _Enter_ , she's heard nothing else. They say the Castle is alive, but right now it feels asleep. Well, it makes sense that the prisoners would keep to the dead areas when they could. She clenches her fists. They turn onto a staircase.

The staircase lets out into a room that looks like some kind of main hall, hung with still-bright tapestries of explosions and . Piles of lab equipment are shoved against the walls. There are three people sitting against a half-assembled clank, one a woman with startling pink hair who's waving her hands as she talks, one a woman in a conical hat and face-concealing veil, one a white-haired -

Oh, thinks Agatha with a distant sinking feeling, so that's what's going to go wrong.

The pink-haired woman blinks. "Professor? Who are these?"

"YOU!" Merlot is screaming but he's not actually waving a weapon at her, maybe they can talk it over. "You _ruined everything_! And now you're _here,_ where I can finally take _glorious, glorious REVENGE!_ "

That doesn't sound promising. Agatha reaches into her coat pocket to grab her death ray. "Revenge for _what_ , exactly?"

"It all went wrong because of _you_ , Miss Clay!" Good, he might drop some information while he's ranting. "Doctor Beetle kept his notes in some kind of _fiendish code_. Not even the Baron's _best cryptographers_ should have been able to work it out! But they _did_! And do you know what they found there, Miss Clay?" He's shouting, voice wavering the way a Spark's would on the edge of a fugue; it's amazing he hasn't used that big gun he grabbed. "Beetle knew all about you, Miss Clay! Or should I say _Lady Heterodyne?!_ "

"So much for keeping that quiet," Agatha hisses. In the corner of her eye, Tarvek doesn't react at all to the revelation. Ooooh, they are going to have a talk. Ideally without broken bones or stab wounds. Later. 

Merlot goes on, still so loud he's probably attracting attention several rooms away. "He _knew_ you could control wasps! He had _plans_ for you! If the Baron knew he would have had us all _stuck in JARS and LEFT TO ROT!_ So I _burned_ all the _notes_ , and the _record hall, AND the CRYPTOGRAPHERS_ , and he _still sent me HERE!_ Oh _yes, Miss Clay, this is ALL YOUR FAULT!_ " 

They stare at each other from across the room, both breathing hard. 

Professor Tiktoffen has made his way to Merlot's side. "Believe me, I'm not happy about this either," he offers, as if conciliatoriness has ever helped against someone angry enough to rant with interrobangs.

" _I'll rip her into little pieces!_ "

"Maybe, Doctor Merlot, you'd be willing to help me _kill them all?_ " And Tiktoffen raises the gun he must have grabbed from the pile of equipment and starts spraying bullets in the general direction of the staircase.

The next few seconds are very loud and difficult to follow. Agatha ends up behind an overturned table; either her last shot winged Tiktoffen's gun or it overloaded and blew up, but Merlot and the woman in the veil are still firing. What did Agatha ever do to her, or did she just end up in Castle Heterodyne because she's a homicidal maniac? 

Agatha can't tell where Theo and Zeetha went. Sleipnir is hastily reloading her flamethrower, and Tarvek is clutching his side and breathing hard. "What - do we do now?" he asks her between pants. 

There's a sudden quiet filled by clicking noises, and the angry voice of Merlot calling, "Useless _rusty_ piece of -"

"Run," Agatha says, and dives for the door. She hopes that falling-body noise is Zeetha taking out the veiled woman, but she can't look back and check.

The passageway is narrow and lit by a red glow, just like most of this awful place. Agatha ducks through a door at random, up another spiral staircase, then through a collapsed section of wall into what looks like the inside of a giant clank - she's running over a horizontal gear three meters wide. Two sets of footsteps behind her, good. Through a panel, down another hallway full of fallen blocks, between two cat-headed statues into an room inexplicably full of giant gauges. She couldn't have run this far without getting winded, three months ago. She stops, listening for the noise of pursuit. 

"Agatha?" Sleipnir calls, in between gasps. "I think we'd better stop here."

She looks back. Tarvek is leaning on Sleipnir's shoulder, face pale, and although it's not very obvious in the red light there's a damp patch on the side of his jacket, over the ribs. Damn. It was too much to hope that nobody would get hurt in that little melée scene, wasn't it?

Well, if anyone followed them, they didn't get this far. "Alright," Agatha says. "Long enough for some bandages. Where are we, anyway?"

Something laughs. It starts as a low rumble, just enough to grab their attention, then a deep noise like a drum, then a ringing so loud it fills the room. It's coming from the _walls_. "Little fools," says the laughing voice. "You are in CASTLE HETERODYNE!"

She probably should have expected that. 

\--

" - and if you need anything at all, just ring! I'll have dinner sent to your room, shall I?" The elderly monk beams at them, with the fond, slightly dotty expression of someone determined to make up for his own lack of a love life by enabling everyone else's, whether they want it enabled or not. It's preferable to stern religious dissaproval, at least. Lars leans closer to Wooster and does his best to look besotted. 

"Thank you," says Wooster, who just looks mildly embarassed. With any luck it will be taken for nerves. 

"Oh, no trouble at all! You boys enjoy your trip!" 

The door closes behind him. Wooster slumps over. Lars stretches out his legs. The steady thrum of the distant engine is so much nicer than being jostled around on a horse. He hasn't been on a train in - fourteen years? Has it been that long? Not since he ran away and joined the circus, and only twice in his life before that, travelling into the city to visit his sick grandmother and six months later to her funeral. 

Despite the danger, despite their being on the run from unknown enimies who've already stolen away two friends for some unknown nefarious purpose, despite that the woman he loves is wandering through a deadly maze full of traps with a scheming fop who offered her a continent as a courting gift and _without him_ \- in the face of all reason, Lars is having a wonderful time. He'd panic if he let himself stop and think, but so far he's managed to keep frenetic enough that fear hasn't got a foothold. He grins at Wooster. "Is anyone listening, darling?"

Wooster looks politely pained. "I think we can stop pretending to be eloping now. I don't know why I agreed to it."

"Well, it explained why we boarded at the last minute and asked the monks to look out for people following us, and it got us a free cabin. Isn't romance wonderful?" He settles down into the wonderfully comfortable seat, and dramatically splays his hand over his chest. "Don't worry, my heart belongs only to Agatha."

"Yes. About that." Wooster doesn't wear glasses to adjust, but he fiddles with the window latch with much the same air. "Do you know, er, does she reciprocate your interest?"

"What?" 

"Does she love you back?" Wooster repeats patiently. 

He does know what _reciprocate_ means, but for a moment Lars had forgotten that not everyone could have told just by looking at Agatha's face. She didn't smile like that in front of the whole world. But trying to explain that without quoting poetry is probably a doomed effort, so he settles for the more concrete, "She did me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage yesterday." 

Wooster blinks at this, and then smiles. "Master Gilgamesh will be dissapointed."

Right, he worked for Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, didn't he? Lars tucks his hands behind his head and tries to remember what Abner told him about how Agatha joined the circus. "Why? Did he ask first?" 

"Yes, in fact. I suppose you might as well be warned," Wooster admits, and wrings his hands. Oooh, does Lars want to hear this story. 

It's a fascinating story, in fact, and funny in parts. Lars tries not to be intimidated by the rest of it - the part, specifically, where Gilgamesh Wulfenbach is apparently still in love with Agatha, where he broke out of a months-long slump when he heard she might still be alive, and sent a terrifying secret agent to protect her, and will probably be turning up himself soon. After all, part of it is the story of how Agatha had been so horrified at his proposal she'd knocked him out and fled the scene. Lars got a qualified yes. 

That the qualification was _if we're all still alive next year_ is, well, something Lars is going to do his humble best to make sure of, even if he can't help with the Spark business. He's on his way to Vienna with Wooster right now because Agatha trusts him. He's holding on to that thought as hard as he can. 

"I suppose from a political perspective you're a much less complicated choice," Wooster says, which strikes Lars as a very cold-blooded perspective, but what can you expect from an English spy? "You're not secretly the heir of the Tsar of Kazan who ran away in search of adventure, or something like that, right?"

"Er. My parents ran a deli. Do you meet a lot of hidden princes in this job?"

"Not many, but it's best to ask." Wooster seems to have relaxed a little, or perhaps resigned himself to his fate. "At least I know you're brave."

"How so?"

"You havn't run away yet."

Lars shrugs. "Would it help?"

"Possibly."

"If you think about it, we're retreating to a place of safety," Lars points out. "Anyone who shows up with an army is going to show up in Mechanicsburg where Agatha can try out her death rays on them. All that's going on in Vienna is politics."

"You say that like my family doesn't stab people," Violetta interjects from the other bench.

They don't quite jump, but they both jerk away, a neat synchdonized moment of shock. No wonder they could play a couple, Lars notes in some distant corner of his mind. Wooster manages, "Lady Mondarev! H-how did you - "

She jerks a thumb at the wide-open window, which Lars is fairly sure was closed when they came in. "You idiots aren't used to Fifty Families games, are you? Well, you'd better learn fast. I'm not hauling your stupid corpses back to Agatha if you screw up."

\--

Agatha hopes this doesn't get them all killed. 

"Castle!" she starts, glaring in the general direction of the voice. "I am Agatha Heterodyne, and I'm here to fix you. Please don't tempt me to blow you up instead."

"Agatha? I don't remember an Agatha."

"Daughter of Bill and Lucrezia."

The silence this time is longer, and the voice sounds colder when it speaks again. "You will prove your claim, or you will die."

"What proof do you need?" She's tempted to start humming; everyone agrees that the particular trick of shutting out noise was a Heterodyne family trait. 

" _BLOOD,_ " booms the Castle, and there's a rattling noise as the whole room shakes. 

Sleipnir ducks automatically, throwing her arms over her head. That would be the sensible response, but Agatha finds she's too angry to be sensible. "Stop being dramatic and give me _useful information!_ "

"You sound so ... commanding."

" _Well?_ "

"Come to the chapel and face your _doom_ ," the voice intones. The last word reverberates from several walls at once, just out of phase like an artificial echo.

Agatha can't bring herself to care. "Fine, but first I have to deal with the idiot here who got himself shot. Then we'll all go to the chapel, which you will give us _directions_ to, and have a nice chat about who's in charge here." 

That gets a grinding noise, but no actual argument.

It's broken, of course it's irrational. She has more immediate problems. Agatha presses her death ray into Sleipnir's hand, with a whisper of, "Cover me."

"Er - what are you -"

"This." She crouches down beside Tarvek, who's sitting slumped against the wall, and punches him in the ribs right over the bullet wound. He jerks and makes an inarticulate noise of pain, and she does it again. "That was for lying to me," she tells him. That felt _far_ too satisfying. 

"What - when did - "

"How long have you known I was a Heterodyne, and how?"

Tarvek looks like he's about to pass out, but wonder of wonders, he doesn't _argue_. Maybe because she doesn't have a really _compelling_ reason not to leave him here to bleed out. "The Geisterdamen's goddess was Lucrezia Mongfish," he gasps, all one hurried breath. "I knew since I knew you were their lost holy child. She made the _shkmah_ \- that's why - " his breath is getting more ragged - "they answer - her voice. Your voice. Please -"

" _What are the shkmah?_ "

"Wasps -" His eyes are rolling back in his head.

Of course, the way her fingernails are digging into the bullet wound probably has something to do with it.

Somewhere above them, Sleipnir is gasping in surprise. "Lucrezia Mongfish was _the Other_?" she says, but that's obvious now, it all fits together. Agatha will work through the implications when she has a few minutes to think. Right now she has to act. She watches as her hands rip off Tarvek's shirt, ignoring the tiny whimpers as she jostles him, prod the wound to make sure the bullet went all the way through. She wraps the remnants of the shirt around his chest. It probably needs stitches, but Theo had the medical kit. Bad planning. If she starts to laugh now she'll never stop. 

Finally Agatha wipes her hands clean on the surving bits of shirt, stands up, and accepts her death ray back from Sleipnir. Her mind is a little more settled now, in a cold still distant sort of way. "Castle," she says. "What's the shortest safe way to the chapel?"

"Oh, there's no such thing as _safe!_ This is - "

She fires the death ray into the wall. The hole it makes is only a few centimeters wide, but edged with purple flames where the stone melted. 

"But the fastest way is out the door with blue glass inserts and down the left hall," the Castle informs them, and she hopes she's not imagining the tremor in its voice. "Watch out for traps. Some of them have minds of their own." 

\-- 


End file.
